


Ravenous

by StarlightDreamer16



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Animal Death, Gore, Horror, I'm Sorry, Lance is pretty messed up, Like, M/M, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Shatt, This is getting a bit dark, Too Much Blood, Zombie AU, Zombies, a lot of blood okay, idk how to tag this but its a zombie AU so expect the worst, if you came here for fluff you are very very lost, klance, my default is angst, probably, so is everyone else tbh, there is so much blood in this, this will probably have a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2018-08-29 10:14:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8485417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDreamer16/pseuds/StarlightDreamer16
Summary: 'At what point does love stop being enough to survive?' He was a monster and it would only be a matter of time before his skin began to show it.No matter how much Keith wanted it to be different, the man he loved was gone.Zombie AuBecause a fandom can never have too much angst.





	1. Chapter One

**Zombie Au, anyone?**

 

All the stories had lied. The end of the world came subtly, so gradual that by the time humanity realised that they were doomed it was already too late.

It began with the miracles. Morgues all around the world saw a decline in bodies as the ratio of survivors in operating theatres and emergency departments rose. The miracle of modern science, they said. Patients with an almost impossible chance of survival walked out of hospitals feeling better than they ever had.

Every medical record was clear – the patients should have died, the doctors and nurses and specialists shouldn’t have been able to save them. What they hadn’t realised at the time was that they had died, each and every one of them. They just hadn’t stayed dead very long.

That was humanity’s first mistake.

 

 

The bullet tore through rotted flesh, shattering the brittle frontal bone of the skull and lodging deep into the trunk of the tree behind him. The walker dropped to the ground. Keith swore and rubbed at his inner ear. Shiro stepped forward and dug a finger into the hole between the walker’s eyes.

“A clean shot. You’re improving,” Shiro said. His eyes narrowed in on Keith’s hand and his face grew sympathetic. “You’ll get used to it, it’s safer than using earplugs and leaving yourself deaf.”

Keith pulled his hand away. “I’m fine,” he said. He stepped closer and leant over the body. “How old, do you think?”

Shiro pressed his hand against the walker’s chest. Under the shredded clothing the skin was discoloured and bloated. Shiro dug his finger into the swollen skin.

“See how it doesn’t tear? If it were more than a week of decomposition the skin would be peeling off at a touch. I’d put it at three to four days of decay,” Shiro explained.

“So,” Keith calculated. “Around a year and a half, maybe a bit more, since death?”

“A week to every hour of decomposition. Sounds about right. You’re a quick learner, Keith.”

“I wouldn’t be alive if I weren’t.”

Shiro smiled and grabbed an arm, he gestured towards Keith to grab the other. Keith attempted to ignore the rubber-like texture as he gripped the walker’s arm. Together they lifted the walker and began the walk back to the base.

Shiro remained one step in front and used his bionic arm to tear through the branches that hindered their path. The ground was packed firm underneath Keith’s feet, too frozen for growth. The tree’s had long since lost their foliage and the wood was brittle against Shiro’s assault.

When they approached the base Shiro carefully rearranged the dead walker into Keith’s grip. Keith fidgeted in the new position and pulled the body closer, lifting it up to lie over his shoulder in order to keep his balance.

“Ask Pidge if they’ve found any new information regarding the delayed decomposition,” Shiro instructed. The older man glanced towards the lab, a large grey building on the outskirts of the old military compound. “And,” he added, “tell them it may be difficult to find a live sample for them anytime soon. Even walkers know better than to stay out in the cold for too long.”

With the walker slumped across his shoulder it was difficult to move too much, but Keith sent Shiro a slight nod and a smile. “Yes, Sir,” he responded.

Shiro clenched his prosthetic arm and tore his gaze away from the lab, he acknowledged Keith’s words with a salute and marched off towards the main building of the base. As soon as Shiro had disappeared inside, Keith winced and stifled a gag.

The walker’s bloated flesh was rancid.

Keith hurried towards the lab, carefully leaning to the side to keep the walker from slipping off of his shoulder.

The lab was secured by a door made from heavy, flawless steel that was sized for a man much taller than Keith. Despite it’s appearance, it opened easily as Keith twisted the handle.

“Pidge,” Keith called, stepping inside. He dropped the walker from his shoulder and rolled the joint, twisting his arm behind his back until it popped back into place with a satisfying crack.

When he received no answer Keith moved further into the room. The tables were coated in stray papers and vials, equipment lined the edges of the room, and a range of screens were set up along one wall. Keith’s eyes were drawn to the blinking curser on the screen closest to him. The small arrow hovered above a series of graphs, each unlabelled aside from incomprehensible descriptions.

Keith grabbed one of the papers littering the desk, but was met with the messy scribble of Pidge’s shorthand.

“Hello, Keith.”

The page fluttered from Keith’s grip only to be snatched up mid-air by the person behind him. Pidge’s smile was tight-lipped as they glanced over at the computer screen.

“Sorry, I, uh…” Keith blushed and stepped away, motioning towards the limp body of the walker slumped near the doorway. “I brought you a new one. Minimal damage to the body, I swear.”

Pidge walked over to the body and knelt down, turning the body face up they winced and hovered a finger over the bullet hole, but didn’t comment. Keith’s eyes strayed to the research lighting up the screen beside him but were quickly brought back to Pidge as they cleared their throat.

“Thank you, Keith.” Pidge smiled and held out an arm towards the exit.

Keith glanced towards the door on the opposite side of the room as he made his way to the door. “Tell Hunk I said hello,” he requested.

Pidge’s smile softened into something genuine. “Of course. I’ll send him over to the common area for dinner, I know Shiro can be a bit dull when it comes to conversation since…”

“You could come too,” Keith suggested, breaking the silence before tension could thicken. “When’s the last time you left this lab?”

Pidge waved his question away. “There’s too much work to be done.”

“How’s that coming? Any new leads?”

“Nothing ground-breaking. There’s a slight difference between rates of decomposition depending on the age before death, but that’s not unexpected. One week per hour of natural post-mortem decomposition still seems to be the most appropriate standard. I still have yet to determine the exact point when the brain shuts down and they turn rabid but–” Pidge’s words cut off suddenly, and their tense smile returned. “I’m sure you have other things you need to be doing, I’ll let you go.”

Keith sighed and, with a wave, left the room.

It was only as he reached the tree line that Keith remembered the second part of Shiro’s request. Turning around he made his way back to the lab. Keith called out Pidge’s name as he twisted the handle and pushed the steel door back open. Pidge’s voice was strained as they yelled back, but Keith’s brain registered the warning a second too late.

Keith was sent skidding along the concrete as a solid mass slammed into his side. Keith reacted instinctually, twisting he grabbed hold of one of the legs of the table beside him and tugged. The metal pole came away easily and, as the table collapsed behind him, Keith lunged at the threat.

The door had been slammed shut at some point during the struggle. Keith knocked the intruder into it hard, before pressing the metal bar roughly across the expanse of their throat. The smell of putrid breath seeped into Keith’s nostrils as the familiar feral gaze of the undead stared back at him through wild, blue eyes. _Familiar_ blue eyes.

An involuntary cry escaped Keith’s throat.

“ _Lance_ ,” he rasped.


	2. Chapter Two

Keith stumbled back, his hands dropped the metal pole and grasped for something steady to hold. Small hands grabbed his and Keith clutched at them, squeezing the fingers and leaning back against the smaller body. Lance – _Lance_ – snarled and lunged forward, his fingers curled into claws, only to be jerked back as Hunk appeared and caught the thinner boy around the waist. Hunk held a syringe with his spare hand and plunged the needle into Lance’s bare shoulder.

Lance’s eyes widened, fear glimmering in the blue irises, and then fluttered shut as his body slumped in Hunk’s arms. A strangled sound spewed from Keith’s throat, his legs faltered and he slid down to the ground. Pidge crouched down in front of Keith but he barely registered it, his eyes were glued to Lance’s slack form as Hunk gently lifted him.

With his eyes closed, Lance looked like he was sleeping. Only he wasn’t sleeping. Keith watched as Lance’s chest remained still – the wrongness of it shook Keith right down to his bones. The harsh lighting of the lab accentuated the ashen tone of Lance’s skin.

Keith didn’t realise that he had begun to hyperventilate until Pidge’s hand made contact with his cheek. Blinking, Keith gasped and sucked in a deep breath. His eyes focused on Pidge’s young face and he reached out, clutching at the material of their shirt.

“You, I.” Keith took a breath and straightened his spine. “He was dead. _You told me he was dead_.”

“He is dead.” Hunk’s voice was calm as he leant down beside Pidge and went to take one of Keith’s hands.

Keith flinched away. “No. _No_. You told me he died on, on the mission. You told me he was dead, not, not a…” His voice came out hoarse and strained as he struggled to say the words.

Pidge looked towards the computer screen, resolutely keeping their eyes away from Keith’s. “I needed a live subject.”

Keith’s blood ran cold. “You took him for research?”

“We took him because he’s Lance.” Hunk frowned at the accusation. “He would have done the same for us.”

Keith looked around the room and realized, belatedly, that Hunk must have taken the – taken _Lance_ into the back room. He pulled his knees to his chest and set his head between them. Keith’s heartbeat reverberated though his eardrums as he attempted to take deep breaths. Pidge and Hunk’s voices sunk through as if he was at the bottom of a lake and they were on dry land. Keith drifted somewhere between their words and the overwhelming thud of his heartbeat.

Keith couldn’t tell how much time had passed when his head cleared. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, lifting his head up from his knees. Pidge and Hunk had moved over to the screens and were whispering amongst themselves.

“How–” Keith’s voice cracked. Pidge and Hunk’s heads snapped towards him. “How did…”

Pidge adjusted their glasses. “How did he turn? The story we told you was fairly accurate. We were ambushed during the supply mission, we hadn’t realised that the factory was housing walkers. I, we told Shiro, told you, that Lance was overwhelmed. Which was true, only, the walkers didn’t – we said that we saw them crack open his skull but…”

Pidge coughed into their fist. Hunk laid a hand on their shoulder and squeezed before taking over. “The walkers got him, but we scared them off before they could get to his head. I don’t really know why we took his body with us, but it was Lance. I, we couldn’t just leave him there.”

Keith stood. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged. “You brought him back here?” he confirmed.

“He was okay at first, when he… awakened. Normal, happy Lance.” Pidge’s face softened. “We thought that maybe we’d been mistaken, that he hadn’t died, that he’d just been knocked unconscious. But then he began to deteriorate and we knew.”

Keith glanced towards the back room. “You didn’t kill him.”

Hunk squirmed. “I know that’s what we should’ve, what you would’ve… But Pidge thought that maybe a cure…”

“Can you do it? Cure him?” Keith asked.

Pidge frowned, fiddling with their notes. “I’m not sure yet.”

Keith nodded in understanding. “Why isn’t he deteriorating? It’s been more than a month.”

“Sedation helps, it seems to slow the decomposition process.”

Pidge typed a passcode into the computer and files worth of data, no longer in code, filled the screens. Lance’s name was scattered throughout the information, along with scans of his brain and body.

Keith blinked. “Fuck,” he whispered. “It’s really him. He’s really back.”

Hunk’s hand landed on Keith’s shoulder, he was surprised to find the heavy weight comforting. “He’s really back,” Hunk reassured. “I know that it’s hard to wrap your head around at first, but… he’s still Lance.”

Keith nodded, his mind racing at the implications of Hunk’s words.

Pidge cleared their throat, reaching up to adjust their glasses. “Look, I’m not trying to kick you out but Shiro…”

“Shiro will wonder why I spent so long here, I get it. I’ll go.”

Pidge nodded and sent a smile Keith’s way. Hunk, however, tensed and rubbed his hands together.

“About Shiro… You can’t, I mean if he finds out–” Hunk stuttered.

Keith cut him off, his voice growing sombre. “Yeah, I know. He won’t hear it from me.” Keith nodded his goodbye to Hunk and Pidge and made his way towards the exit.

“Oh, and,” Keith began, twisting his body back around to face them, “for the record, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to kill him either.”

 

Keith’s knuckles knocked against the doorframe and Shiro glanced up. The older man was perched in front of his desk, his gun in his hands and an array of bullets spread across the tabletop. Shiro smiled as he spotted Keith and set down the gun on the table next to a bottle of metal polish.

“Everything okay over in the lab?” he asked.

Keith smiled. “Boring and spotless as usual.”

Shiro laughed, the sound rang hollow in the oversized room but neither man acknowledged it.

 

Keith stumbled through the doorway to his room. He closed the door and pressed his forehead against the cold wood, his eyes stung and his chest ached.

Turning, he leaned back against the door and let his legs collapse. He slid down the door and scrunched his eyes shut. A tear squeezed itself out of his eye and he blinked, attempting to stop the rest from escaping. He reached up and ran his hands through his hair, gripping tightly and tugging at the roots as more tears slipped down his cheeks.

One word played through his mind, on repeat.

_Lance Lance Lance lance Lance Lance lance lance lance lance_

 

The next morning Keith was greeted by Shiro’s travelling gear. Shiro stood by the door with a large duffle bag strapped to his shoulder and a thick coat covering his body.

“I have to make a trip,” Shiro announced as Keith’s eyes racked over the get up. “You’ll be in charge while I’m away.”

Keith’s gaze skimped over the deep bags that had taken residence under Shiro’s eyes. “Of course,” he replied. “Anywhere in particular?”

Shiro adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “Allura’s settlement, she’s agreed to exchange ammunition for extra medical supplies.”

Keith’s eyes flicked to the trees behind Shiro. “Is that wise, Sir?”

“It’s necessary.” Shiro sighed and pushed his hair away from his eyes. “We’ve run dry, we can’t defend ourselves against the undead if we’re too busy being picked off by infections and colds.”

Striding over to the jeep, Shiro tossed his bag into the back and opened the driver’s door. He turned back to Keith and his mouth softened into a smile.

“It’s a bit daunting, I know. But all you really have to do is watch the perimeter, you shouldn’t have any problems if this cold snap continues.” Shiro glanced towards the perimeter as he spoke, his eyes narrowing as they scanned the tree line.

“And you? Will you be okay, Sir?” Keith asked.

Shiro climbed into the driver’s seat. “Don’t worry about me, Keith. I’ll only be gone for a month, if I’m not back by then, assume the worst.”

Shiro closed the door and pulled the seatbelt across his chest. They’d survived this long, Shiro often said, no point letting it all go to waste by dying in a car accident. The jeep’s engine came to life with a quiet purr – Pidge had modified the vehicle to produce as little noise as possible.

Shiro leaned an elbow through the open window. “I believe in you, Keith,” he said.

“Good luck and safe travels, Shiro.”

Keith waved Shiro off.

A month. They had a month.

Would a month be enough?


	3. Chapter Three

Keith shifted in his seat. The harsh lines and sterile white of the lab may have had a soothing effect on Hunk and Pidge, but it did nothing to calm his nerves. Not when he knew that Lance was somewhere nearby.

“He didn’t mention when he’d be back?” Pidge prompted.

“No. Just that if it takes more than a month we should assume the worst.” His eyes drifted over to the screens; even decoded, the data was uninterpretable to him. “I want to see him.”

Hunk and Pidge exchanged a look. Hunk’s face was trusting, but Pidge’s gaze flicked to Keith, eyes wary. After a long moment, Pidge nodded.

“Be careful,” Pidge warned. “He’s not the Lance you remember.”

Hunk led Keith through the laboratory, skilfully weaving between tables filled with paperwork and scientific equipment that he could only guess the uses of. They passed through a door towards the back and the temperature dropped. He suppressed a shiver.

“The first sign of deterioration is memory loss and confusion. That’s how we knew he wasn’t okay. He would look at us and see strangers staring back at him. We put him under sedation before it could get worse. He’s harmless when sedated,” Hunk explained.

“What about the other day? He attacked me.”

Hunk frowned. “We were adjusting his dosage, hoping to get more of a response from him. Obviously it didn’t work, so he’s back to his usual dose now.”

They paused before a large steel door. Cold air seeped from the metal. “A freezer?” He eyed the door.

Hunk nodded as he twisted the handle and pulled the door open. Keith stepped forward, his eyes locking onto Lance’s sleeping figure.

“He,” Hunk hesitated in the doorway, “he won’t know you. If he wakes up. It’s strange, having him look at you and not know you. I just wanted to warn you.”

Keith frowned, looking over at Lance’s still body. “Thanks,” he murmured.

Hunk gave him a comforting smile before ducking away. Keith’s eyes swept over the room, Lance’s body was draped across the floor with a blanket over him and a pillow beneath his head. He eased his body into the space beside Lance, sitting with his back to the wall, close enough for his arm to brush against Lance’s side. The lack of warmth radiating from Lance’s skin was so fundamentally wrong that he almost got up to leave.

Almost.

The ground was so cold that at first it felt as if it were burning, but he ignored it. Underneath the pale skin, the body beside him was still Lance. He had dreamt about Lance being okay since the accident. A small part of his brain prayed that this wasn’t a dream, a larger part knew that this was a nightmare made flesh.

“I hate you.” A laugh bubbled up his throat – it came out encased in a sob, a pathetic, animalistic sound from deep in his chest. He scrunched his eyes closed and let the words that he had been dragging around escape. “I hate you so much. It’s selfish and stupid, but you said you’d come back alive and you didn’t and _I hate you_.”

Keith’s eyes stung with unshed tears but he squeezed his eyes closed tighter to ward them off. The bright lights of the freezer turned his eyelids red.

Fingers, cold but familiar, grazed his wrist and he froze. Slowly, he opened his eyes and glanced down at his hand. Lance’s fingers were looped around his wrist, so loose that it felt like they were barely even there. Every drop of anger vanished as the blue-eyed boy blinked up at him, confusion clear on his face.

“Keith?” he whispered.

A weight lifted from his chest. He hadn’t realised just how scared he was of Lance forgetting him until then. “It’s me,” Keith replied, his voice soft.

A shudder passed through Lance and his grip on Keith’s wrist tightened as he pulled the other boy closer. He barely flinched when Lance buried his face in his side, the hand not gripping his wrist coming around to grasp at the back of Keith’s shirt.

“Keith,” Lance repeated, his voice hoarse.

Keith’s body softened and he hesitantly rested his spare hand in Lance’s hair. Lance sighed against his side.

“I’m here,” Keith reassured. “I’ve got you.”

A moment later Lance let out a whimper and his fingers fell slack around his wrist. As Lance’s hand began to slide away he caught it with his own and brought it to rest in his lap. Lance’s head rested gently on his leg, he continued to run his spare hand through Lance’s hair as the other boy slept.

Keith’s pulse was a loud, steady beat in his head. The tears that he had tried to hold back finally dripped down his cheeks. Lance was a solid weight against him. Keith had thought that he had lost him, but here he was, blue eyes and soft hair. His skin was sickly white, so pale that he could see his veins, but his hands were calloused and familiar.

Keith’s eyes darted down to his lap; his fingers were pressed firmly against the pale skin of Lance’s wrist. With a start he realised that it wasn’t his own pulse he was feeling, it was Lance’s.

 

“He doesn’t feel dead. How can– I don’t understand.”

“Physically, he’s fine. His heart is beating and his skin shows no sign of deterioration. Mentally, however.” Pidge frowned and took a second to adjust the papers in their hands. They avoided Keith’s gaze as they continued. “His memories left first, those he cared about most slipping away last. He recognised Hunk long after he forgot my face. We’ve been keeping him lightly sedated and cold to halt the effects of the virus. I’m not certain what he’ll lose next, but my best guess is that it’ll be his cognitive functions. Then, once his brain has shut down, his body will begin to decompose.”

“You’ve already spent a whole month trying to fix this, what is another month going to do? It won’t be enough.” He frowned.

“We have you now, three heads are better than two.”

Hunk’s optimism hung heavy in the air, but Keith watched Pidge. He had caught the crinkle between their eyebrows at the new time frame.

After a long moment Pidge met his eyes. “I can’t promise anything.”

“I expected as much.” He nodded. “But, if he’s physically fine, why did he smell – I mean, I know what decay smells like and…”

“He’s not actually decaying. As far as we can tell, the smell was a defence mechanism brought to the surface by the rapid influx of adrenaline in his system,” Pidge explained.

“Like a skunk,” Hunk interjected.

“But he’s… he’s okay, right? It was just a problem with the medication.”

Pidge sent a calculated glance towards him before answering. “We’ve been experimenting with different levels of sedation, in the hopes of finding a dosage that allows him to retain his mental functions without furthering the infection.”

“To stop the infection, but not reverse it?” He glanced over at the data on the screens.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Hunk defended. “We don’t know how the disease was created, which mutations were involved. At this point any cure we come up with would probably kill him, or make it worse.”

“If… if you knew more about…” Keith’s sentence trailed off.

Pidge’s eyes narrowed on him. “If we knew more about what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Pidge looked like they wanted to force the information from his throat but Hunk set a gentle hand on their shoulder and brought up the previous night’s test results instead.

 

Altea was a minefield of carnage and corpses. Shiro watched, feeling nothing more than the gentle rumble of the Jeep beneath him. Screams pierced his ears, faint sounds he could have mistaken for the wind had he not known better. He should have gotten out of the car and helped somehow, searched for survivors, taken down the remaining walkers – he should have done something. All he could do was sit there and watch as chaos fell around him.

A crack sounded behind the Jeep, like thunder as it echoed across the ruined field. He blinked and fumbled with his seatbelt, gazing at the figure as his vision blurred in and out of focus.

Hair drifted around her like a cloud, or a snowstorm. Most of it had been pulled up and secured into a thick bun atop her head, but strands defiantly fluttered around her jaw. Allura. It was Allura, he–

He needed to snap out of it. It wasn’t his first battlefield, it wasn’t even his tenth; he’d been a soldier before zombies had become a reality. He took a breath, ignoring the sharp ting in the air, and unfastened his seatbelt.

Allura didn’t move when he stepped up beside her, but she knew he was there. In war you learnt to be perceptive, or you died. Allura’s spine was rigid; he followed her gaze. Coran was draped across Alfor, his body heaving with the force of his sobs. Allura began reloading her gun with shaking fingers.

“Coran.”

Coran turned his red-rimmed eyes towards them. His tears had smudged the delicate marks painted beneath his eyes, which marked him as a member of the Altean colony. Blood seeped through Coran’s fingers where his hand was pressed firmly against Alfor’s arm.

“He’s fine. They didn’t even touch him. Princess, he’s fine. _I swear it_.” Tears ran down Coran’s quivering lips as he spoke.

Allura stepped forward and, with a strength that always surprised Shiro, ripped Coran’s hand away. There was a gaping wound, the blood a vicious contrast against Alfor’s dark skin.

“It’s just a scratch. He’s fine, he’s fine.” Coran’s voice broke and he descended into indistinct whimpers as he pulled Alfor closer, until the older man’s head rested in his lap. The way Coran clutched Alfor against his body resolved the years of rumours surrounding their relationship.

Allura carefully rearranged her father’s body against Coran, making sure his head was in range but not in a position to hurt anyone. When she lifted the gun, Shiro knew better than to offer to pull the trigger.

The shot reverberated across the settlement.

Allura’s eyes met his and a solidarity settled between them, one leader acknowledging another. Allura was his primary contact, but Alfor had always been in charge of the camp.

“Can I give you a piece of advice?” Shiro requested, her head tipped forward in approval, “Don’t hide it, the pain you’re in. They’ll know either way. Save yourself the struggle and let them help you.”

“Did you let them in?” Her voice was soft. Her hands trembled.

He uncurled her fingers and took the gun from her hands. “No. But you’re a better person than I.”

“I didn’t even say goodbye,” Coran whimpered, still holding the cooling body of his lover. Shiro couldn’t look at him.

“He wouldn’t have wanted to wake up… Not knowing what awaited him,” Allura’s words were laced with authority.

Shiro wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the threat lingering in Alfor’s bloodstream, or the sight of her holding the gun to his skull with shaking fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible person when it comes to updates but I really hope you liked the chapter!  
> Comments make me feel guilty about not updating and therefore make me more likely to actually get around to updating.
> 
> ((If you came to me for fluff... You made a mistake and I am sorry.))


	4. Chapter Four

The chaos of the lab tripled overnight. Keith inched across the room, stepping over paper and microscopes and overturned beakers. The drawers of the file cabinets along the left side of the room were wide open, with the thick folders usually contained inside spread across the floor. Hunk had warned him that their work usually brought forth organised chaos but he was sure this wasn’t what they’d meant. Surely, they would find their research easier if they had some organisation system in place. He needed to help, in any way he could.

He picked up a small stack of papers from the ground, straightening them and setting them on the table beside him before repeating the action with the next section of scattered pages. When he had stacked the majority of the papers he picked up the top few and read over them, hoping to find a way to order them.

Ink overlapped whatever had originally been printed on the page. An array of colours – blue, black, red, but also vibrant shades of green, purple, yellow – covered the paper. Pidge’s messy handwriting was the only thing linking the statements. Until, slowly, his mind began to put it together – the mess of numerals and letters that were found in scientific formulas were scribbled in red, and blue words described previous results while green writing listed chemical compounds.

He flinched as Pidge seized the pages from his hands, abruptly enough to split the paper in two. They didn’t seem annoyed, if anything they seemed relieved just to have the paper out of Keith’s grip. Hunk hesitated a step away, hands awkwardly resting behind his back. They’d come in from the same door as Keith had, rather than the corridor where Lance’s freezer waited as he had expected them to.

Pidge brought their hands together and crumpled the paper into a ball. The sound was thunderous in the stillness of the room. They pressed it down to condense it as much as possible before shoving it in their pocket. Hunk shifted, eyes darting between Keith and Pidge, and an armful of ration bars were revealed. Keith, it appeared, wasn’t even trusted enough to fetch their lunch for them.

“What is it that you don’t want me to see? I thought we were a team,” Keith demanded.

Almost quick enough for Keith to miss it, Hunk and Pidge exchanged a look. The foil of the pre-packaged food crackled as Hunk stepped forward.

“We are a team,” The taller man insisted. “You’re just – I mean, it’s science stuff so you wouldn’t understand.”

Keith flinched at the words. “You would be surprised by what I’m capable of understanding.”

Neither Hunk nor Pidge made a move to stop him as Keith shouldered his way between them and out the door.

 

Keith’s knuckles ached through the thick fabric he’d wrapped his hands in. Ignoring the pain he lunged forward and grinned as his hands collided with the punching bag. When it swung towards him he lifted his leg to kick it back.

He’d spent the remainder of the previous day in the training rooms and had done the same that day as well. It was nearing midnight, but he still had a five-mile run and shooting practice planned.

Shiro would have yelled at him for over-exerting himself, but Shiro wasn’t there.

He dove forward, putting his entire body weight behind his next punch. The ringing in his ears and the sound of the music feeding through his earphones was all he could hear as adrenaline raced through his system and blocked out the sounds around him. It took a few seconds before he realised that the ringing he was hearing was coming from the speakers in the upper corners of the room. He ripped his earphones out and blinked up at the speakers. The sound they were emitting was looped and high pitched, sending pain through his eardrums.

Something was wrong with Lance.

He grabbed his jacket, pulling it on and unbinding his hands as he ran. He cursed at the few seconds it took him to open the door to the outside and close it behind him and then to repeat the actions when he arrived at the lab. When he rushed into the room Hunk and Pidge stood in the main lab, waiting for him.

It couldn’t be Lance. If it were they would be in the freezer room trying to help him. Right?

Keith looked towards Pidge and Hunk expectantly. Hunk’s face was easy to read, his cheeks strained to contain his smile and his fingers fidgeted with the paper in his hands. It was good news then, nothing was wrong with Lance. Nothing new, at least. Pidge, however, was harder to figure out. They stood beside the computer system, their eyes cold and calculating as they watched him. Despite their birdlike name and features, they reminded him of more predatory creatures – a shark or a wildcat or a snake.

Hunk caught his attention, gesturing to Pidge. Or, more precisely, to the small vile of yellow liquid in Pidge’s hands.

“It’s not a cure, not even close, but it could slow the infection without needing to keep him sedated,” Hunk explained, as he rocked on his heels, too excited to stay still. “It’s not much, but it’s the first step in the right direction.”

His heart raced. Lance, his mind cried, Lance Lance Lance. This is what would save him. He refused to think of Shiro, to think of what this would have meant six months ago.

“That’s good right? That’s what you needed. When are you giving it to him?” Keith only barely kept his own excitement from his voice. His eyes were locked on the vile in Pidge’s hands; the liquid seemed to shine golden in the light.

“Oh, no. It’s not ready yet. We need to test it first and–”

Pidge cut Hunk’s sentence off. “We’ll inject it today.”

“What? No. We don’t know what it’ll do when combined with human DNA. It could kill him.” Hunk’s stare was intimidating, even when not aimed at him.

“Technically–”

“I know the technicalities, Pidge” Hunk snapped. “We’re not giving it to Lance without testing it first.”

The skin between Pidge’s forehead wrinkled as they rubbed their eyes. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that we have no one to test it _on_. It’s below zero outside, even the undead aren’t wandering around out there.”

“You just inject it into someone and it’ll work its way into their bloodstream?” Keith asked, stepping towards the two of them.

“Yes but – hey!”

Keith ignored Pidge’s protest as he snatched the vile from their fingers. The glass was warm from where Pidge’s fingers had been and he spared a thought to hope he didn’t drop it. In the seconds it took Pidge and Hunk to realise what was happening, he had already filled a syringe with the serum.

He drew in a breath and held it as the needle pierced the pale skin of his inner forearm, and injected the substance. Too late, Hunk lunged forward and grabbed the empty vile and used syringe.

Pidge met Keith’s eyes solemnly. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”

 

Shiro awoke with a start. The multitude of breathing bodies surrounding him caught him off guard. He had only ever shared a bed with two people, Keith and–

The memory of where he was dawned on him slowly. Altea. Attack. Alfor.

Allura.

He reached for the woman who had been sleeping beside him but grasped only empty space. The sheets still held the warmth of her body. Sitting up he looked across the room. In the darkness it was difficult to identify one person from another even as his eyes adjusted. The entirety of the Altean colony – those who were left – were stretched out across the floor of the dining hall, huddled in groups to share body heat under the thin sheets as they slept.

On the other side of Allura’s empty space, Coran slept fitfully. His lips moved to silently shape Alfor’s name, again and again. Shiro looked away. As he stood, careful not to disturb Coran or the others dozing nearby, he folded the sheet and layered it over Coran. He deserved so much more, but for the time being that was all Shiro could offer the older man.

A cloud of pale hair drew him to the far side of the room, furthest from the windows and doors. Allura moved between the children, gently sweeping their hair from their faces and checking that they were warm enough. She met Shiro’s eyes and stilled.

“You should sleep,” he whispered.

Allura turned towards the child next to her, one of the youngest, and stroked the girl’s hair. “I can’t.”

“I know.” Shiro frowned, gently. “But you should try.”

Allura stepped over the children until she was in front of him. Her cheeks shined and when Shiro reached over to touch them his fingers came away wet.

“Does it get easier?” Allura’s voice was hoarse, even though he knew she hadn’t let her self cry properly yet.

“No.” Shiro answered, truthfully. “It never gets easier.”

Outside the wind howled and Allura flinched. Her eyes darted to the windows on the other side of the room and then to the people – her people – around them. Shiro saw the decision before she had the chance to voice it.

“Leaving isn’t safe,” he said.

“Staying isn’t safe either.” Allura straightened her spine, but he saw the indecision in her eyes.

“We can fix up the breaches, fortify the base. Out there, if the walkers don’t kill them the weather will,” he justified.

“If we stay here they’ll come back.” Tears spilled across her face, a glimpse of the pain she refused to show the others. “I can’t lose anyone else, Shiro.”

“If you leave, you will.”

Allura’s body sagged in defeat.

 

Belatedly, Keith’s body cringed. He had never been comfortable around needles, much less capable of injecting himself with them on a whim. But for Lance he would do anything he could to help.

Hunk reached for him but then pulled his hands away a second later. His kind eyes scanned Keith’s body before reaching his face. “How do you feel?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. He imagined he could feel the serum coursing through his veins. “Fine, I think.”

“You think?” Hunk questioned. Hunk’s hands scrunched the fabric of his shirt to stop him from reaching out for Keith.

“Well,” Keith frowned. “I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to feel.”

Pidge stood at the computer system, analysing a blood sample they had taken immediately after it appeared that Keith wasn’t about to drop dead. “You should feel awake, if anything.”

“Oh, I guess I do feel less tired now that you mention it,” he announced.

Pidge made a universal sound of approval. Hunk had begun to rummage through a first aid box he had found. After a moment he pulled out a torch and shone it in Keith’s eyes. Keith winced at the sudden brightness.

“His pupils are reacting as they should, a little under-dilated but that’s expected,” Hunk said to Pidge, who recorded the data.

“His blood work appears to be in range of what we hypothesised.” Pidge didn’t pause as they typed into the computer.

“So, the test worked?” Keith asked.

Hunk’s face lit up. “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”

 

An hour later, in the freezer room, Pidge knelt down and injected a dose of the serum into Lance’s pale shoulder. 

“This dose won’t last long,” they warned, before standing and leaving the room to continue their research.

When Keith turned to leave, Hunk hesitated by Keith’s side. His eyes were locked onto the freezer floor.

“What you did was stupid.” Hunk’s voice was jagged but his eyes softened and met Keith’s. “But, thank you. I don’t know if I would have found the courage to do the same.”

Keith reached out and laid a hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “You would have. You’re one of the bravest people I know.”

Hunk covered Keith’s hand with his own. He gestured towards Lance. “You should stay, he’ll need a friend when he wakes up.”

“You’re his best friend, Hunk. You should stay, not me.”

“He needs you, Keith.” Hunk’s smile was kind as he stepped towards the door. “Come get us if anything seems wrong.”

Hunk left, closing the door behind him until only a sliver of space remained between the door and the wall.

Across the room, Lance sighed in his sleep. It was such a familiar sound that Keith froze, his back against the wall. He had asked him once what he dreamed about. Lance had smiled at him, the smile he reserved only for Keith, and told him that he dreamed of home. They both knew he wasn’t referring to the town where he grew up.

Slowly, Keith stepped forward and made his way to Lance. He stretched out his legs so that they were parallel to Lance’s, and pulled the blanket up to cover more of the sleeping man’s body. The action was based more on habit than necessity.

He could feel the cold numbing his back where it rested against the wall but he didn’t move. Hunk was right; Lance needed him. He refused to let him down again. At his side, Lance shifted and lifted his upper body to rest against the wall with a yawn.

Lance blinked, lifting his fists and rubbing at his face as if it were a normal day and he had just woken up with sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes. When he looked over, his eyes were the same startling shade of blue that Keith was used to, but they were clear in a way they hadn’t been before. They flickered past Keith, towards the door, and his lips puckered.

“You shouldn’t be in here. I’m contaminated.” Lance’s voice was rough with disuse. The sound of him clearing his throat echoed through the small space.

Keith inched closer, meeting Lance’s concerned gaze unblinkingly. “I know.”

“Why am I here? I told them…” Lance frowned. His eyes strayed to the blanket covering his lower body and gently touched the pillow beneath him.

“You know they’d never leave you behind. They’re working on a cure,” Keith reassured. “You’re going to be okay.”

Lance’s gaze softened at the mention of his friends. And then softened to a further extent and Keith realised the other man was losing focus. His blue eyes were unwavering as they stared at the door.

“You need to leave.” Lance said, voice flat. His breath was coming out in quiet pants as he tried to focus.

“No.” He reached over and laid a hand on Lance’s shoulder, ignoring the chill.

“I don’t want you here.” Lance blinked, refocusing on Keith. His eyes were glazed as the medication wore off.

His eyes softened as he tried to keep the other man’s focus on him to calm him down. “Lance–”

“Please,” Lance breathed, his eyes pained, “please just go.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Keith tightened his grip on Lance’s shoulder. A promise.

Lance tried to shrug it off, but his body barely moved in his exhaustion. “I’m dangerous. I’ll hurt you.”

“I promised you once that I would stay, even when it got rough. I’m not ready to break that promise.”

“I’m not,” Lance’s voice broke and he looked away. “I’m not even alive anymore, Keith.”

Keith moved his hand down to take Lance’s hand in his. Despite the frigid temperature of the other man’s skin, he intertwined their fingers. “Lance.”

Lance’s eyes were wide as they met his. His eyelids struggled with the strain of keeping his eyes focused. “I can’t, I’m, I’m…”

“Rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to map out how this story will go, which is much more useful for me than just going in with no plan so hopefully that means more frequent updates. I still have no idea how long this is going to be, but I guess we'll find out.
> 
> Thanks for reading, I love you all!
> 
> Comments/Kudos are appreciated.


	5. Chapter Five

Each dose only lasted a few minutes in Lance’s bloodstream before the virus burned it off. Opening his eyes and seeing soft purple irises looking back at him and being able to recognise that this was real felt like waking up from a dream. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten Keith. He couldn’t imagine looking at the dark mess of hair and not knowing exactly who it belonged to. But he knew it could happen, knew that it had happened already because the man with the bright smile and the younger one with the calculating eyes looked at him and he knew he was supposed to know them but he didn’t.

He recognised the walls surrounding him. When he pressed his fingers against the metal his skin took an extra second to let go. There was a pattern of what he figured was ice against the walls, but if it was cold he couldn’t feel it.

The area was sterile; the ground and walls were unforgiving against his skin. Someone had gently laid a blanket over his legs and placed a pillow under his head. They were different than the last time he’d awoken. Still familiar, but with a different scent clinging to them, despite the stagnation of the room.

Movement caught in his peripheral vision and he turned, startled to find Keith sitting by the almost closed door. He wasn’t sure if Keith had always been sitting there. Despite the clarity that came with the injections, time moved in lurches. He didn’t know how long he had spent with his fingertips against the wall or his nose in the blanket.

“This isn’t mine,” he stated, running his fingers over the soft material.

“No, it’s not,” Keith agreed, watching him with cautious eyes. “It’s mine.”

“Oh.” The information settled in his mind, and he found that he wasn’t surprised. He brought the fabric back up to his nose and inhaled. The scent was dulled but familiar – calming.

Keith knelt forward onto his knees and shuffled across the room to rest closer to lance’s side. Having Keith close was somehow more reassuring than anything else in the small room.

“How long will this last?” he whispered.

“Not long,” Keith admitted. “But I’ll stay until it wears off. And I’ll come back.”

He frowned, memories flickering in his mind. “I told you to leave.”

Keith reached over and touched Lance’s arm. He didn’t miss the shiver that swept across Keith’s body.

“And I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

Lance placed a hand over Keith’s and closed his eyes, succumbing to the abyss of his mind once more.

.

“I am happy that he’s regaining his ability to focus.” Hunk dragged his fingers across his face, letting out a sound of more than just physical exhaustion. “I just wish he wouldn’t look at me like that. It’s like, he’s here but he’s not here, you know? He keeps looking at me and trying to figure out who I am.”

Keith startled. “Lance doesn’t know who you are?”

“I thought you knew that. He forgot us as the virus worsened.” Hunk’s frown caused his face to line with wrinkles.

“No, I know that. I just thought he’d have remembered you by now.”

Hunk blinked and turned to Pidge, whose eyes widened marginally, before looking back at Keith. His expression reminded Keith of a man stolen of breath.

“Lance remembers you?” It was Pidge who had spoken, Hunk having failed to get the words out.

Keith stilled, and Pidge’s earlier words reiterated in his mind.

_His memories left first, those he cared about most slipping away last._

“Not always,” Keith lied. From the expressions on the others’ faces he hadn’t done a very convincing job.

Pidge was already typing into their laptop, Keith could see equations and formulas spreading across the screen. Hunk, despite still looking like a kicked puppy, couldn’t contain his grin.

“… just adjust the dosage a bit and add…”

“… it’s working, it’s really _working_ …”

Keith didn’t have the heart to tell them that it wasn’t an improvement. That Lance had never needed to remember him in the first place because he’d never _forgotten_ him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the lack of progress; it poisoned the corners of his mind with doubt and fear.

He just wished there was something he could do about it.

.

Something shattered in the hallway. Keith stiffened, pulling an earphone free and grabbing his gun with the hand not currently holding his water bottle. When he stepped into the hall he relaxed, flicking the safety back on the gun and leaning against the doorframe of the weights room.

Pidge was bent over, carefully sweeping shards of glass into the palm of their hand. Their hair was a mess, strands sticking straight up – the unfortunate product of restless hands and sleepless nights and a week’s worth of natural oils.

“You’re going to cut yourself,” Keith announced.

Pidge shot a glare over their shoulder. “You could help, you know.”

Keith shrugged and walked over, setting the bottle and gun down and using the edge of his sleeve to brush the glass shards into a pile. He studied the discolouration beneath Pidge’s eyes and the red seeping across the whites of their eyes.

“When’s the last time you slept, Pidge?”

Pidge startled, eyes flickering to and away from Keith’s. They focused on the glass in their palm instead, moving their hand so the shards caught the light and sent rays across the bridge of their nose.

“I have more important things to do than sleep,” they replied, after a moment.

“He wouldn’t want you to exhaust yourself like this.” Keith frowned.

Pidge’s eyes hardened. “How would you even know? You hated each other. Hate. Shit.” Pidge groaned and tipped the glass onto the floor, using their spare hand to cover their face. “Hate. He’s still _alive_.”

“Pidge…” Keith reached and laid a hand on their shoulder.

Pidge shook it away, rubbing at their face and focusing on regrouping the glass. “He’s still alive but he won’t be if I lose my shit now. I don’t have time for sleep. I still need to refigure the serum and find the right components to create it and what I really need is another undead to test it on so I can stop worrying that I’m going to kill Lance instead of cure him and I can’t let Hunk worry about me because he’s already worried enough and–”

“Pidge, _breathe_.” Keith reached out and gripped their shoulders.

Pidge looked up at him with wide eyes and for a second he could see the person they were before. Sometimes it was easy to forget, despite the fact that Pidge was one of the main reasons any of them were still alive, they were still only fourteen years old.

Tears welled up in the corners of their eyes and they blinked, shaking their head violently to stop them. When that didn’t work and the tears bubbled over and down their cheeks, Pidge rubbed at their face with enough force to redden the skin.

“Shit.” A wet sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped Pidge’s throat. “I’m already a mess. What a great person for Lance to be putting his life in the hands of.”

“Pidge. _Pidge_.” At Keith’s words, Pidge reluctantly met his gaze. “Lance is lucky to have you. But if Lance were able, he would tell you to stop being an idiot and get some rest. He’d probably say something around beauty sleep too but that’s not the point. You can’t help him if you keep doing this to yourself.”

Pidge frowned, eyes wide and cheeks damp. “But–”

“The world is not going to end if you sleep for a few hours.”

For a moment Keith thought Pidge was going to continue to be defiant, but then they nodded.

“Okay,” Pidge relented.  
.

Keith packed quickly, carefully storing a collection of water bottles in a backpack with a spare pair of socks and a gun. He tucked a second gun into the holster at his side and slid enough ammunition to last a few days into his jacket pocket.

He lingered at the door of the base. Across the barren field he could just make out light peeking through the bottom of the lab’s outer door. Pidge was back inside already, only allowing themselves a few selfish hours of sleep. He thanked whoever was listening for the fact that Hunk and Pidge’s sleep schedule was even worse than his own.

The moon hovered above him, casting shadows across the ground and turning the trees into monsters. He closed the steel door behind him and welcomed the crisp night air invading his lungs. Heaving the backpack into a more secure position, he drew the gun into his hand and stepped into the dark.

.

In the pit of Allura’s stomach something twisted. Shiro stood behind her, far enough away that it wasn’t immediately obvious that he was keeping an eye on her. She could feel his gaze flickering back to her every few seconds. When she looked back he would either avert his eyes or look out at the darkening clouds beyond the window instead.

He was worried about her, they all were.

She hated it. It didn’t matter that Coran had practically raised her alongside her father after her mother’s death. It didn’t matter that Shiro had been her friend since they were toddlers. Her father had left her in charge and a leader wasn’t allowed to show weakness.

She understood that, even if the others didn’t. Despite Shiro’s words, it had worked for him and it would work for her as well. She refused to be the reason her friends, her _people_ , collapsed into chaos. The time of playing Princesses had passed. She had been raised by a leader; it was time she grew into the role.

Allura hardened her face into a cold, unfeeling expression as the first streak of lightning shot across the sky.

.

Across the country, the sound of claws raking across metal echoed throughout a laboratory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a little shorter than I wanted it to be but a _lot_ is happening in the next chapter.  
>  I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	6. Chapter Six

The storm ripped the sky in half.

Lightning hit close enough that Keith felt the impact as it struck the ground. When it touched the sky it made the branches surrounding him stand out in contrast, a hundred writhing, twisted arms reaching for him in the dark.

His gun was a steady, comforting weight in his palms but he knew better than to trust that it would protect him. The storm had erupted too quickly for him to find proper shelter and he was crouched at the torn open base of a tree trunk with no stronger protection than the weapon in his hands.

In the chaos, he wouldn’t be able to hear a walker coming for him. If the undead didn’t find him, perhaps the lightning would.

He shook his head, grimacing as the water clinging to his hair dripped across his cheekbones. It was pointless to think about things he couldn’t change. He’d had enough of that, it was the main reason he’d left the base to pursue the wild task in the first place. If he died out there, he was going to die doing something useful.

Keith carefully gathered his things, keeping his weapon accessible at all times, and moved from the pitiful security of the tree trunk.

He noticed the blood first. It was almost fully diluted by the rain, but it was still enough to lead him in the right direction. He knew better than to expect to find someone living, but a body meant death and death meant walkers were nearby.

He stepped carefully through the woods, aware that the rain would obscure his scent but also prevent any signs of an attack until it was too late. Had he not been looking, he would have missed it. As it was, he stumbled onto the body almost by accident, tripping over the landscape before realising that what he had assumed was a log was in fact a torso half obscured in foliage.

Their face had been ripped off, leaving red-brown scraps of skin and flesh over hollowed out eye sockets and broken cartridge. Parts of the body were picked clean down to the bone, but others remained – enough to attract predators, the type of predator that could smell decay from miles away.

He would have to make camp. Not too close, but close enough to hear the walkers coming. He scanned the area, taking account of the thick greenery and the ancient trees. He could climb one, it would be difficult in the weather, but not impossible. He would be safer amongst the branches than he would be on ground level.

The hush of movement was subtle enough that anyone else would have disregarded it, but Keith turned and scrambled back as something stepped from the shadows of the trees.

The creature in front of him was a mess of bone and fur and teeth. Its growl vibrated through Keith’s bones and settled into a thick dread in his stomach. It stepped forward, nails clicking against the bones of the corpse at its feet, and he caught a flash of sliver at its neck.

A collar. This was, or it had been, someone’s pet.

He hoped that whoever the beast had belonged to had the intelligence to have left it behind, before it turned those sharp teeth on them. He doubted it.

Without breaking its gaze, he lifted the gun in his hand.

“No!”

Something warm slammed into Keith’s side and sent him sprawling to the ground. His teeth knocked together with an intensity that sent pain shooting through his body. He looked up, blinking the rain from his eyes, and gaped at the person standing over him.

“ _Pidge?_ ”

Pidge blinked back at him and fumbled, opening their mouth and closing it again in vain. After a second they held out their hand towards him. Movement behind Pidge made Keith tense. He reached out past Pidge’s extended hand and aimed the gun at the beast creeping towards them.  
Pidge knocked the weapon from his hand, placed their fingers in their mouth and whistled loud enough to make his ears ring. “Rover, down.”

The beast, Rover, laid down and rested its head on its paws with a whine. Keith’s eyes flickered between Rover and Pidge, hard with distrust.

“I can explain.” Rover’s ears, one with the skin half peeled away with decay, twitched at Pidge’s voice. “Please, let me explain.”

Carefully, Keith reached out and grabbed Pidge’s hand, letting himself be pulled to his feet. “Start talking. And give me back my gun, we don’t all have guard dogs to protect us.”

Pidge handed the weapon over with a hesitant gaze. “He won’t hurt you.”

He scoffed, gesturing towards the corpse at Rover’s feet. “It’s a bit too late to protest his innocence.”

“Rover didn’t do this.” At Keith’s wary expression, Pidge’s voice strengthened. “He didn’t.”

“Okay,” he relented. “Then who were they?”

“I thought for a moment they might have been _you_ ,” Pidge admitted.

“You were looking for me?” Keith asked. “Why?”

Pidge snorted. “Are you joking? Because you ran off on a suicide mission to do, what? Kill as many walkers as you could before they killed you?”

“I came to find a walker for you to test the cure on.”

Pidge stiffened, eyes wide. “Oh.”

He refused to meet their gaze. “Yeah.”

It took Pidge a moment to recover, but when they did they punched Keith in the arm and, ignoring his cry of pain, said, “Why would you go off alone? I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I,” Keith groaned as Pidge hit him again, “stop it. I couldn’t have taken you or Hunk with me.”

“What, because we’re too weak?”

His eyes narrowed with seriousness. “Because you’re essential. If you die, we all die. If I die, you can manage without me.”

 

“You’re an idiot if you believe that, Keith Kogane.” Pidge said, voice unnaturally quiet.

.

They made their way through the woods in silence, aside from the thump of Rover’s paws against the damp ground. The rain had finally relented in its violent force and retreated to a light drizzle.

“How did that happen?” Keith asked, looking pointedly at Rover.

Pidge was quiet for a long time, long enough that he thought they weren’t going to answer him.

“Did Lance or Hunk ever tell you about how we met?” Pidge asked.

He frowned. “No. I just assumed you knew each other from… before.”

“I ran into them while they were on a supply run. Or, they ran into me. Lance was messing around and he stumbled upon my hiding place. I thought he was a walker at first.” Pidge laughed, an unamused sound. “I guess that’s kind of ironic now. They offered to take me and Rover along with them. They didn’t know who I was, Lance didn’t even realise I was a girl at first, but they took me along anyway.”

“Lance thought you were a boy?” Keith asked. “You didn’t correct him?”

“I was travelling as a boy back then. Back when I still identified as a girl it was… easier. Safer,” Pidge explained.

“Why?”

“The end of the world,” Pidge said, their expression dark, “brought out the worst in some people.”

Keith knew better than to ask what that meant, he’d spent enough time in foster homes before finding Shiro’s family.

“We were halfway back to the base when we were attacked. Hunk and Lance tried to… they were so brave. We all knew we were going to die but they tried so hard to protect me. There were so many walkers and we were overwhelmed. One snuck behind me and I… I couldn’t defend myself. Rover saved me. He jumped between the walker and me, but he never had a chance. He was never going to make it out alive, but because of him the rest of us did. The virus didn’t affect him the way it affected humans. His body decays but his mind remains. I made Hunk and Lance promise to keep him a secret and when we got to the base I told them the truth, about who I was, about finding Matt.”

“And, your parents?” Keith asked, gently.

“My mother went out for help. She never made it home. I don’t know what happened to dad. Matt was all I had left.”

“I’m sorry about–”

Pidge cut him off, their voice weak. “Don’t. Please.”

Keith let the subject drop.

. 

It was Rover who smelt it first, but the rancid scent soon made its way into Keith and Pidge’s lungs as well. Keith expected Rover to bark or lunge at the walker but one sharp command from Pidge had the creature sitting patiently as Keith followed the walker further into the woods.

The storm had pushed the walker closer to the base than Keith was comfortable with. His finger lingered on the trigger of his gun and his mind raced with angles and calculations. He could make the shot; the walker was distracted, probably by Rover’s strange scent. He could kill the creature with ease, restraining it without causing too much damage would be more difficult.

It had been Pidge’s idea to set a trap. But despite their insistence, Keith had refused to let them be the bait. It took all of his strength to stand still and let the walker find him, every part of his body screamed at him to kill it and get away as quickly as possible.

_For Lance_ , he reminded himself, not for the first time since he’d left the base the night before.

He couldn’t help the flinch that racked his body as the walker spotted him and growled, more animal than any sound Rover could have made. It made its way towards him with the sort of speed that defied the portrayal of them in every movie. The reality of the way the creatures moved, prowling and galloping like wildcats, was more fearsome than anyone had guessed.

The walker screamed, an oddly human sound, as it stepped into the snare and was jerked into the air to hang by its left foot. Keith stepped forward and slammed the edge of his gun against the smooth skin of its temple and it fell silent.

He couldn’t help but compare the icy temperature of the walker’s body to Lance’s as he wrapped a length of rope around its arms and chest and secured it as tight as possible. The walker had only just begun to decay, and Keith couldn’t help but compare this wild, insatiable creature to the man asleep in the lab’s freezer.

The walker’s eyes opened and it snarled at him, its mouth a gruesome mess of blood and broken teeth. Before he could react, the walker convulsed and slumped to the ground. Pidge stood behind it, one hand on Rover’s head, the other holding out a small electrical device.

“Did you just _tase_ it?”

Pidge shrugged, reaching down to pick up the end of the rope and passing it to Keith. “I told you I wasn’t weak.”

.

When Keith walked in, Hunk breathed a sigh of relief and drew the smaller man into his arms. “You, my friend, scared the crap out of me,” Hunk announced.

Keith was surprised by the jolt of remorse that coursed through his body and the sense of security he felt at that moment. He hadn’t realised that Hunk considered him a friend.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

When Hunk pulled away he sent a look of exhaustion towards Keith and squeezed his arms before letting go. “Please don’t do that again.”

Keith made no promises. Instead he said, “I brought back a walker for you to test the cure on.”

Hunk looked towards Pidge, who nodded their confirmation, before turning back to him. He made no indication that he was startled by Rover’s presence, so Keith assumed that Pidge’s story was true.

“That’s… really useful, actually,” Hunk said. “Do you want to see Lance? I gave him a dose, but it won’t last long.”

Keith couldn’t interpret the look Hunk gave him but nodded his thanks and made his way to Lance’s freezer.

Lance’s eyes were clear when Keith walked into the room, and yet for a moment Keith held his breath waiting for the other man to ask who he was. Instead Lance smiled and reached a hand out towards him.

“Keith,” he whispered, and it was the gentle release of tension in lance’s shoulders that told Keith that he had been worried too.

Keith sat down and allowed Lance to rest his head on Keith’s shoulder. Lance’s fingers were tight around his wrist, the pad of his thumb pressing against Keith’s pulse like he was checking that he was alive.

“I’m here,” Keith reassured, his fingers reaching up to comb through Lance’s hair. It was coarser than he knew Lance preferred.

In his arms, Lance was still. “You left.”

“I came back. I wasn’t leaving for good,” Keith carefully worked a knot out of Lance’s hair, “I wasn’t leaving you.”

“You have a brother… Where’s Shiro?”

He stiffened at Lance’s words. “He’s helping Allura’s group. You’re safe.”

“I’m not worried about myself. The others are busy helping me, who’s looking out for you?”

“I’m alright.”

“Keith…”

“You should rest. The dose will wear off soon.”

“I can’t I’m…” Lance hid his face in the crook of Keith’s neck, his next words so quiet that Keith almost missed them. “ _I’m hungry, Keith_.”

.

“Shit. Fuck.”

Hunk let out a weak, desperate laugh – a pitiful sound – at Pidge’s curses. “Yeah,” Hunk responded, his stomach churning.

Keith reached up and tugged at his hair hard enough that Hunk was worried about his scalp, but Keith didn’t even flinch at the pain. He didn’t want to think about how this was impacting Keith. He and Lance had been… not friends, but something.

“The cure?” Keith asked.

“Not even close to ready,” Pidge stated. “We can’t feed him.”

“We can’t not feed him, he’ll die,” Keith snapped back, slamming his palms down on the counter of the lab and causing one of Pidge’s files to slip to the ground.

Pidge sighed as they reached down and picked it up. “I’m not saying that, but we don’t have the resources to feed him right now. Unless you brought more back from your trip than I know.”

Keith rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but Hunk cut him off. “Resources? That’s, you know that you’re talking about, about a person, right? This isn’t a joke, you’re discussing killing someone. Letting _Lance_ kill someone.”

Hunk stepped back and felt the cold stability of the wall at his back. He let his legs carry him down to the floor and pressed his thumbs against his eyelids. The red-black that filled his vision was comforting. Fingers touched his arm, small but firm – Pidge. He could feel Keith standing not too far away. 

“I’m,” Hunk’s voice cracked and he pressed his fingers harder against his face, “just an engineer. I can’t do this.” 

Pidge’s voice was soothing. “You don’t have to. Stick to the science, Keith and I will handle the rest." 

Hunk didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to, think about what that meant. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I know I'm terrible when it comes to updates for my fics but stick with me and I promise it'll be worth it... eventually.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are greatly appreciated.
> 
> xx


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter is the start of this story getting quite a lot darker and more graphic so if you're uncomfortable perhaps this isn't the story for you. This chapter contains a scene that I'm not really sure how to tag but a dead animal is eaten rather disturbingly so if that's not something you're comfortable with then I'm sorry and skip down to "Interesting." I'm not entirely sure what you expected coming into this fic though, because zombie AU's aren't typically the... nicest to read.
> 
> Enjoy?

Lance stared at the dead mouse in his hands. It was bigger than he'd thought mice were supposed to be, bigger than his little sister's pet mouse had been, at least. It was a struggle to keep his mind from straying to other topics, the medication Hunk injected made his head heavy and slow. He could only focus on one thing at a time, and often lost himself again before there was time to move on to the next subject. He only remembered Hunk and Pidge’s names because Keith told him.

 _The mouse_ , he reminded himself, _Keith and Hunk and Pidge and the mouse._

It was a pitiful thing, really, despite its size. Any heat that had once filled its body had fled with death. Its body was curled up protectively around its tail, which still had traces of blood dried onto the textured skin. He could smell the blood, could smell it like he could smell Keith's blood, a few steps away. It was strange to realise how hyper-focused his senses were, he'd never found them particularly remarkable when he was alive. It was strange to think about that too, him not being alive anymore. He didn't feel not alive, he¬-

_The mouse. Keith and Hunk and Pidge and the mouse._

Its blood was different than Keith's - where Keith's smelt rich and warm and sweet, the mouses hardly smelt like anything. Its smell lingered like a memory, something he had to focus on to notice. Not particularly appetizing, but not particularly unappetizing either.

"I'm sorry," Pidge said, their voice startling Lance. He had been so focused on Keith's body a few steps away that he had forgotten about the others hesitating behind him. "It was all we could find since the storm hasn't let up yet."

"Is it… okay?"

Lance forced himself to smile at Hunk, hoping that it was reassuring rather than frightening. He wanted to say something to comfort him, but he wasn't sure how to answer the other man's question. The mouse didn't seem bad, per se, but he was still building up the courage to put it in his mouth and eat it. Gently he used one finger to stroke down the soft fur of its back, which he shouldn't have done because then his muddled brain switched out the small, stiff creature with Veronica's childhood pet.

He didn't startle when Keith dropped down to sit beside him, he had been aware of Keith's presence since he'd stepped into the room. He was close enough for Lance to feel the heat radiating from his body, but not close enough to be touching. Keith's warmth made the mouse seem colder in his palm.

"You need to eat it," Keith said.

Lance sighed. "I know."

He looked at Keith, taking in the silent encouragement in his eyes, and placed the mouse in his mouth. It was cold and stiff on his tongue and the fur caused an unusual sensation against the roof of his mouth, but he bit down and forced himself to chew.

It tasted like ash.

When he finally forced himself to swallow he looked to the others with a smile. Pidge and Hunk were staring at him, studying him like one of their science experiments - which, he guessed he was. Keith's eyes were soft, asking him if he was okay without words.

"That wasn't too bad," Lance admitted even as his stomach twisted violently. "I think I could manag¬-"

Lurching forward he heaved up the meagre contents of his stomach. For a moment he couldn't do anything other than stare at the clumps of fur and tail spread out amongst the blood across the floor. He leaned forward, and his insides gave one more vicious action as the last of the rodent's blood was brought back up.

Slowly, Lance wiped his mouth, grimacing at the blood that smeared onto his hand, and looked towards the others. Hunk was staring at him with horror-struck eyes and Keith was on his knees, one hand outstretched to help Lance. Pidge surveyed the scene with calculating eyes.

"Interesting," Pidge said.

.

"Clearly, he needs something alive," Pidge said.

"We both know what he needs." Keith paced the room, his mind racing. He ignored Hunk's panicked whine at his words. "He isn't going to survive on anything less."

"Statistically, he could. The Walkers have preferences towards… certain food groups, but they must be able to live with supplementary sustenance." Pidge's attention didn't stray from their computer.

Keith moved closer to watch the screen but had trouble interpreting the codes and formulas Pidge was typing out. "Have you ever seen a Walker eat anything else? Because I haven't."

"Obviously if someone were around to see it, they would be the primary food source and the Walker wouldn't be focused on alternatives." Pidge frowned, their forehead creasing. "That leaves the problem of finding anything alive in this storm."

"I can do it, I'll go out and I won't come back until I find something." Keith cut Pidge off before they could protest. "Compared to going out looking to bring back a living Walker, this is nothing. Plus, we don't really have a choice."

Pidge was quiet for a long moment. "Take Rover with you and stay out of sight."

.

Shiro grinded his teeth together, his muscles straining as he lifted the iron sheet above his head. Hands reached down and carefully pulled the sheet onto the makeshift platform amongst the ceiling racks. Half of the roof had already been patched up before the worst of the storm hit but the rest was reduced to being repaired from the inside. Those who had the strength worked on securing the thick iron sheets to the ceiling to keep nature from intruding.

Allura, who refused to sit back and watch, had turned out to be handier with a toolkit than most of the men. She expertly attached the sheet to the ceiling with a thick screwdriver. Her hair was eager to escape from the bun she had contained it in, strands twisting free to frame her face, and her shirt sleeves had been pushed back to reveal powerful biceps.

Guilt pooled in Shiro's stomach and he adverted his eyes. Their fathers had joked about Allura and Shiro growing up and falling in love but that was a million miles away, in a different world. Shiro's heart wasn't his anymore, it hadn't been for a long time.

Allura reached a hand over the side of the platform and Shiro took it with his human one, carefully helping her down. He ignored the fact that her hand felt wrong in his palm, too delicate against his calloused skin. If Allura noticed his hesitation, she didn't make it obvious.

She walked through the room with long strides, analysing everything that was happening in the small space. The children had fallen asleep despite the severity of the storm and several women lay with them. Not all of them were mothers, but not all of the children had mothers left. Allura took a moment to carefully tuck a child more securely into their blanket.

Those who weren't watching the children or repairing the roof were in the corner, sorting through the slim amount of food and fresh water that had survived the attack. Allura paused beside them and took the paper they had been using to track the quantity of supplies.

Her face fell at the numbers scribbled down. "You're certain that this is all there is left?"

"I'm afraid so. Water shouldn't be an issue if this weather keeps up, we've already set up buckets and whatever else we could spare to catch the rainwater. Food is a different story, though." The man's eyes were on Shiro as he spoke. Shiro made a point of turning to Allura to listen to her.

"I will organise a group to make the trip to the storage base. Only those who can move quickly through the landscape. Begin gathering extra coats and gloves, they'll need it out there," Allura commanded.

Shiro frowned, following Allura as she began approaching men and women capable to making such a trip. "What's the storage base?"

"My father planned for things like this, having our food supply cut off or decimated, so he began storing essentials in a large storage facility not too far from here. It's also where we get our canned goods," Allura explained. "Without it we would have died a long time ago."

.

The bird was half frozen from the snow, but it was alive. Keith had carried it carefully inside his jacket, using the warmth of his body to keep its tender heart stable until he'd returned to the lab. Pidge, he discovered, wasn't great with animals that were smaller than Rover.

The small creature let out gentle coos as its feathers were defrosted by the heater. Something in Keith's heart winced. Hunk would have been a better fit to nurse the bird back to life, but Keith and Pidge agreed that letting Hunk know would cause the larger man nothing but torment.

Pidge checked the bird's heartbeat and, seemingly content with the results, instructed Keith to follow them along to Lance's room.

"We aren't going to inject him?"

"I think his less humane instincts may be better suited for this activity," Pidge said. "Awakening him last time seemed to halt his progress. I skipped his last dose of sedatives, he should be just starting to wake up."

The last time they had adjusted Lance's sedation he had almost killed Keith. He didn't want to think about what Lance would be like with nothing to prevent his more monstrous traits from appearing. He didn't ask if it was safe, they both knew it wasn't.

Pidge paused at the closed freezer door. Low growls emanated from within, deep sounds that trembled through Keith's bones. Rather than opening the door, Pidge pressed a device on their wrist and a screen was projected above it. On the hologram, Lance paced. He seemed torn between his usual self and something worse, his eyes switching from scared to murderous and back again.

"I installed a camera when we first relocated him," Pidge explained. "We try not to use it much, to give him as much privacy as we can. Even in this state it feels… wrong."

Keith's posture relaxed. He hadn't exactly been hiding his concern for Lance, but he didn't want them to know either. _Together_ , he and Lance had agreed, even if it felt like a lifetime ago.

On the screen, Lance paused by the opposite wall and Pidge was quick to type in the code to unlock the door. The door opened and for a moment Lance's tormented eyes met his. The bird gave three weak flaps of its wings as Keith threw it into the room and Lance lunged, not at it but at Pidge and Keith and the open door. Pidge was quick though, the door was closed and locked before Lance had even made it halfway across the small room.

Despite Pidge's calm composure, their breath was harsh and uneven. On the screen at Pidge's wrist the bird fluffed its feathers, nervously watching Lance as he returned to his pacing. Lance sniffed in the bird's direction but ultimately ignored its presence all together.

"He's not eating it. Why isn't he eating it?" Pidge groaned and zoomed in on the video feed. The bird seemed at make peace with Lance's ignorance and had begun grooming its ruffled feathers, letting out warning coos when Lance paced too close. "We should have cut it, so he could smell the blood."

"He can smell the blood." Keith said. "It's just not the right type."

Pidge didn't argue with him as they strode back to the main lab. They sat, ignoring Keith as thoroughly as Lance was ignoring the bird in the next room, and picked up a pen and one of the files that Keith recognised as Lance's progress report. With a stern grip, Pidge crossed out a line of text. "We still have alternatives."

"Pidge, he needs more than alternatives. He's going to die," Keith rationalised.

Pidge stiffened and turned to him. "We still have alternatives and we are going to try them. Lance wouldn't want this, you didn't see him when he realised he had been bitten. He would have rather _died_ , Keith."

Keith couldn't stop the flinch that shook his body at the thought of Lance, _his Lance_ , being dead. He had already spent too long thinking that he was, he refused to let it become truth. "It doesn't matter what he wants. What matters is what he needs, and what he needs is-"

The outer door of the lab opened with an exaggerated thud that echoed through the hallway and into the large room occupied by Keith and Pidge. Keith stiffened; Hunk was the only other person on the base and he knew better than to open the door hard enough for it to hit the wall.

But it was Hunk's voice that carried down the hallway, the smooth tenor as familiar to him as his own. Recognising each other was easy with so few people on the base. Hunk's words were confusing, primarily because he didn't seem to be speaking to either of them.

"There's usually more of us, but Shiro went out to assist one of our sister camps."

Pidge met his gaze with wary eyes, quickly shutting down the research on their computer as Keith gathered what paperwork he could and moved it out of sight. Pidge remained seated but pumped their seat up a level to seem taller. Keith almost laughed at the sight, as if Pidge wasn't already the most intimidating person in every room.

Hunk entered the room, his smile tense. His hands tugged at the fabric of his shirt as he sent Pidge a look that Keith couldn't comprehend.

He wasn't alone.

The man that followed towered over Hunk but even with the thick towel wrapped around his body it was obvious that he was suffering from starvation. Keith could see each of the man's ribs through the thin, worn-out material of his clothes. Half obscured behind his long, matted hair were hollow cheeks. He looked like a walking corpse.

It made the decision easier in Keith's mind.

.

Those selected for the storage collection were late.

Allura paced the room, absentmindedly twisting a strand of her hair around her fingers. It didn't matter that she had given each of them the option to stay behind, that she hadn't forced any of them to do more than they were willing to. She had been the one to approach them and ask them to risk everything by leaving the base. If they died it was her conscience that would take the impact.

Shiro lingered in her peripheral vision, eager to ease her mind, but she pretended not to notice him. She wasn't in the mood to be comforted, she was ready to go out and bring her people home. She couldn't, she knew that, she was needed there to keep the rest of her people safe. It was the one thing she had always hated about leadership, relying on others to do the tough jobs for her, waiting for them to die in her place.

"Princess," Shiro began. "The storm-"

"I'm aware," she snapped.

She wasn't sure whether it was the emergence of her childhood nickname or Shiro's gentle assumption that she was too preoccupied to notice the change in weather condition that annoyed her. It hadn't escaped her notice when the harsh rain had transitioned into snow that distorted her view of the landscape. It hadn't been the mild flakes she had been hoping would take over, but a wicked flurry of hard packed ice that tripled the danger she had put the men and women outside in.

Behind her, one of the children awoke and let out a startled cry. Their high-pitched voice called for their father and Allura's heart lurched. She couldn't turn around, couldn't bring herself to check whether the children belonged to one of the potentially dead men.

"Allura."

"Don't," she instructed Shiro, her voice weaker than she intended.

"No, _Allura look_."

She followed his gaze and suppressed a gasp. The outline of a small group was visible through the snowstorm. It was difficult to see through the harsh weather, but the shapes were unquestionably human in nature. For a moment Allura worried that the men and women approaching, who every second became more and more familiar, weren't quite the same as when they left. It didn't matter that she knew, logically, that it took more than a few hours to make the transition from human to Walker, the fear tugged at her brain. But the people stumbled through the snow in a closely huddled group, relying on one another for warmth and stability in ways the undead never would.

She wanted to run to them, to walk with them for the last few hundred meters, but she knew that the danger had yet to pass. Instead, she waited with baited breath as the people she had promised to protect crossed the winter landscape alone.

When they finally made it to the locked door they struggled to open it. The snow had built up and blocked the entrance, preventing Allura from opening it from the inside. With trembling hands, the storage collection group began digging away the snow. It was a slow-moving job, with them pausing frequently to huff warm breath on their frozen fingers though their borrowed gloves, but eventually Allura was able to open the door enough for them to squeeze through.

The Alteans were quick to step forward and offer blankets and bodily warmth to their frost-bitten members, Allura included. The woman in her arms had skin that was like ice against her own, but she refused to release her until she had stopped shaking. It was a long, tense moment before the members of the expedition regained enough warmth for their teeth to stop chattering.

"It's all gone," the woman Allura had warmed said, her voice almost as numb as her body had been. "Either the Walkers got to it or someone else did, but it's all gone now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the first scene then all you need to know is that Lance eats a dead mouse and then rather violently vomits up the contents of his stomach. It is going to get worse.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I know I suck at updating but I promise I've got this story at least semi planned out.


	8. Chapter Eight

The bag swayed on its cord, Keith’s fists leaving impressions in the red leather. Keith tightened the length of cloth around his knuckles and lunged forward, using the pull of his hips to support his punch before leaning back on his left leg and preparing to go again. It wasn’t his normal routine, he could have taken a dozen swings in the time it took for him to take one with the force he was using. But some days he needed to feel the punch with his whole body, needed to hear the sound of fist against leather and know what his body was capable of.

Boxing was familiar in a way that so much of the world wasn’t anymore. In the small exercise room with the same old boxing bag that had been there since Shiro’s recruitment and music blaring in his ears, Keith could pretend that his brother was just down the hall. Like it was any other day, and Shiro was about to come into the room laughing and flirting with–

He punched the bag again, letting himself feel the movement of his muscles all the way from his fist to his back to his calves. Something shifted in his peripheral vision and he spun, ripping his earphones out and reaching for the gun at his side simultaneously.

Their new guest stood at the door, half leaning against the frame and watching Keith with interested eyes. “Were you stationed here, back before the world went to shit?”

Keith tucked his earphones away, picking up his water bottle but keeping the gun in close range. “My brother was, I got to stay on base sometimes.”

“I assumed you were military too.” The man eyed Keith up. “You look like the type.”

“Too young. I was only seventeen when everything first started. I was in training, though.” Keith took a sip of water, set the bottle down and unbound a hand, careful to wind the cloth up properly. “Turned out training was good enough.”

The man’s laugh shifted into a raspy, rattling sound that reminded Keith of the orphanage. The older kids used to call it Death’s Cough, but all Keith knew was that kids would get sick, and then they’d be gone.

“The name’s Thace.” The man held out a hand.

Keith used the hand he had yet to unwrap to shake it. “Keith.”

A part of Keith’s mind, the same part that was already storing away the fact that Thace was sick, recognised that it would be harder now, knowing his name.

“This is a big base,” Thace continued, “I’m surprised there aren’t more of you.”

“There used to be six of us here. But that was a long time ago. What about you, have you been alone long?” Keith asked.

“For a while, yeah,” Thace admitted. “I was with a colony once, but that broke up pretty quick and then… the woods aren’t exactly the safest place to live. Our number cut down quickly.”

“So, just you.”

“Just me, I doubt there’s a soul left on this planet who even knows my name anymore.” Thace smiled, three of his front teeth missing. “Aside from you folks now.”

Keith smiled, tugging off the remaining cloth from his hand. “Have you eaten yet? I was about to head over to the cafeteria and have breakfast.”

Thace’s eyes lit up and Keith couldn’t help but watch the way his clothes swayed, borrowed from Hunk’s closet and much too big on Thace’s thin frame. His skin was worn and heavily calloused, his fingers had felt brittle in Keith’s hand, but Keith knew that it took something special to survive out in the wild for as long as Thace had.

This wasn’t a man to underestimate, especially not when he turned back and caught Keith’s eye, a strange glint in his gaze.

.

“Even if we stick to emergency rations we only have enough food to last two weeks.” Allura ran her hands through her hair, beginning to section it for a braid but giving up a moment later. “Without the storage facility as a viable food source this location is going to get very risky very quickly.”

“So, we leave,” Shiro said, watching as a few of the women taught the children how to fold up their sleeping bags properly. He wondered if any of them were mothers, if their children were part of the group, if that even mattered anymore. “We go to my base, we have plenty of room and Hunk has plans to set up an indoor farming station.”

Allura hesitated.

Shiro reached out, surprised when she let him take her hand. “I know it’s a lot to ask them, but it’s better than the alternative. They know you, they trust you. Everyone knows where your heart is on this, Allura.”

“How long has it been, do you think, since the initial outbreak, one year? Two?” Allura’s gaze turned to the children. “There are infants here. They never got the chance to know the world we grew up in. And now I’m risking their lives, risking their futures. It took you, what, two days to drive here, how long do you think it’ll take to walk through the snow with no car and close to a hundred people? How long do you think a two-year-old is going to last out there in the cold?”

“I’ll drive back, clear a path and bring food,” Shiro suggested.

“This isn’t the type of snowstorm that’s letting up anytime soon, we both know that. It’ll take you a week to get back to your base in this weather, even with the car. That means by the time you get back we’ll already be half mad with hunger. Even if we take the radio silence from your base as nothing more than a side-effect of the storm, you can’t bring enough food back to make this work.” Allura slumped against the wall, letting her body slide down until she hit the floor.

Shiro joined her, groaning as he looked across the room. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Allura agreed. “Fuck, indeed.”

.

Keith left Thace after breakfast, making his way to the lab on his own. When he arrived, his stomach twisted, bile rising up his throat. The benchtops, usually covered in Pidge’s haphazard piles of paper, were splattered with blood. Fresh, still the vibrant red colour that always reminded him too much of sugary, artificial drinks. Almost silently, Keith removed his gun, placed his back to the wall, and inched towards the table with the highest concentration of blood.

“Shit, Pidge, that fucking _hurts_ ,” Hunk exclaimed, his head popping up on the opposite side of the table.

A line of blood crossed Hunk’s cheek. Keith stepped forward, but he couldn’t find any visible facial or head wound. Suddenly Hunk darted between tables, seeming to weave around Keith without actually recognising his presence. Pidge’s messy head of hair popped up next and they lurched forward, hands outstretched for Hunk, who had arm held protectively to his chest.

“What the fuck is going on?” Keith asked, stepping between Hunk and Pidge.

Hunk sighed, a loud relieved sound, and wrapped his uninjured arm around Keith, hiding behind him. “Buddy, I love you so much. I’ll bake you literally anything you want for the rest of your life if you just keep them and their torture device away from me.”

And, finally, Keith noticed that Pidge’s child-like fingers were clutched around a needle with a half full blood bag barely attached.

“Oh please, this would have been over an hour ago if you just learned to stay still,” Pidge complained, reaching for Hunk again.

Keith put a hand out, further separating the two scientists. “Answers, now.”

“Lance is hungry, and your choice is not an option so I’m beginning work on alternatives,” Pidge explained, turning to glare at Hunk. “But Hunk is a shitty donor and in case anyone was unaware, I’m a tech genius, not a doctor, so I have pretty much no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

“So, your next solution was to, what, feed Hunk to Lance?”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. We know dead animals don’t work and we know live animals don’t work so we’re doing what you suggested and progressing to human samples. More specifically,” Pidge held up the blood bag, “human blood.”

At the mention of live animals, Hunk paled. Clearly Pidge hadn’t granted him all the details, as he’d requested.

“Will he be conscious?” Keith asked, recalling the vivid image of Lance, eyes feral as they locked onto the open door.

“Yes. I’d hoped his instincts would take over, but I think convincing him to drink it might be easier.” Pidge tapped the blood bag, detaching the tube connecting it to the needle. “This is probably enough for now. Since Hunk’s being so uncooperative.”

“I’ll help,” Keith insisted. “Not that I don’t think you two can handle it.”

Hunk squeezed Keith shoulder before letting go and moving out from behind his back. “Thanks buddy, we can use all the help we can get.”

Pidge nodded, already half-distracted by something on their screen. “I’m setting the next dose off now, he’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

“You can do that from here?” Keith asked, stepping closer to peer at the screen.

“Yeah.” Hunk grinned. “We made the serum air-born when it started to get more dangerous to inject him. My idea, one press of a button and the sedative is switched out with the stabiliser.”

Keith nodded. “Smart.”

Hunk moved to another bench, rummaging for something. After a moment he pulled out a box and settled beside Keith. Hunk moved quickly, peeling the backs off of dozens of tiny Band-Aids and sticking them to the puncture wounds on his arms. Keith passed over a tissue, gesturing to the smear of blood on Hunk’s cheek.

On Pidge’s monitor, an image of Lance’s room popped up, Lance’s still figure in the centre of the screen. Slowly, his body shifted. It was strange, Lance recovering from sedatives looked no different than Lance waking up any other morning. He’d always struggled to find the energy to pull himself from sleep. But, unlike Keith, he’d somehow always gotten up and started his day despite his own protests.

“He’s up,” Pidge commented.

On the screen, Lance sat up, rubbing a hand over his face and looking towards the door. His mouth moved but no sound came from the monitor.

Pidge took the blood bag and a thermos and poured the small amount of blood into the cup. At their questioning looks, Pidge shrugged. “He deserves whatever humanity we can give him.”

As they walked to the freezer room, Hunk lingered behind him again and Keith sent him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. 

Lance caught his gaze the moment Keith entered the room and his face lit up with recognition. A moment later he caught sight of the thermos in Pidge’s hands and flinched. “I don’t want to eat another mouse.”

“It’s not a mouse,” Hunk reassured.

Lance’s eyes moved to Hunk and stuck. Keith noticed the exact moment it connected for Lance, the thermos and the Band-Aids covering Hunk’s arms.

“No,” Lance whined. “Please, don’t make me.”

“It’s okay,” Hunk lied. “I volunteered.”

“It’s not okay, none of this is okay. I’m not, I don’t want to…”

“Lance,” Pidge interrupted, holding out the thermos. “We aren’t giving you a choice here.”

Lance’s eyes sought out Keith’s, the same shade of blue as always, but duller, lifeless.

“Please, Lance,” Keith implored. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Slowly, Lance reached out and took the thermos, wincing as he unscrewed the lid and inhaled the aroma. Keith sat down beside him, resting a hand on Lance’s knee in encouragement as the other man took the first sip. When the liquid stayed down, he took another sip, and another.

Despite his hesitation, Lance hastily drained the thermos. Keith refused to let his thoughts linger on the reality of the situation for too long.

“Shit, it worked.” Pidge laughed. “Hunk, it worked.”

“How do you feel?” Keith asked, moving his hand in small circular movements.

Lance paused, seeming to think about the question properly before offering an answer. “Good. I feel–”

Lance’s body writhed under Keith’s hand. His smile dropped, and Keith had barely a second to move out of the way as Lance vomited Hunk’s blood across the floor with violent, painful movements.

Lance’s body heaved again, pulling more blood up through his throat and splattering it across Keith’s shoes. It was more blood than Keith had seen outside an attack, more blood, he realised, than Lance had consumed.

“This isn’t just Hunk’s blood,” Keith said, panic lacing his voice as he moved closer to Lance, hands fluttering uncertainly by Lance’s head. “Something’s wrong.”

Across the room, Hunk made a high-pitched, whining noise, face buried in his hands.

“Pidge,” Keith yelled, holding onto Lance’s shoulders as he began to convulse. Lance’s body was freezing beneath his hands.

Pidge darted forward, their hands small but steady as they pulled at Lance’s face, checking his pupils and leaning to the side as he heaved up more blood. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“Pidge,” Keith repeated, “you need to do something.”

“I’m just,” Pidge’s voice was desperate and fractured, the voice of a fourteen-year-old way over their head, “I’m just a hacker, I don’t know how to fix this.”

Lance stiffened, drawing the room’s attention back to him. He leant over, let one more bout of blood drip from his stained mouth and then turned and slumped forward, his face hidden in Keith’s neck. The convulsions tapered off, now no more than a consistent tremble of Lance’s shoulders.

Slowly, the motion of Lance’s shoulders shifted, changing from the aftermath of whatever had just happened into something more familiar. Keith’s neck dampened as Lance cried, big, gasping sobs that Keith had only witnessed once before. Lance had held onto him then as well, whispering of his family, terrified that they were out there somewhere, dying because he wasn’t there to protect them.

Lance’s voice was muffled against Keith’s neck, hoarse from the violent heaving he’d experienced minutes before. “I just want this to stop, Keith. I just want to come home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> You know what to do.  
> *Blows kisses*  
> 


End file.
